Assessment of Life Science Intermediate School Educators (ALSISE) This application addresses broad Challenge Area (12) Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Education and specific Challenge Topic: 12-OD-102 Teacher Preparation Programs. The goal of this project is to generate evidence-based measures of the effectiveness of 65 federally-funded teacher professional development institutes for middle school life science teachers. Such institutes typically meet for a week or longer during summer months and aim to increase teacher knowledge of relevant subject matter and appropriate teaching methods. Institutes freely employ a wide range of methods and materials, from placing teachers in research labs to carrying out classroom activities as students do in their classrooms. Often university research faculty have a substantial role in creating and running these programs and wish to expose teachers to cutting-edge research findings. However, each institute generally employs its own measures of success, making comparisons of effectiveness among different approaches problematic. There is little systematic and rigorous research on the improvement in teacher knowledge overall or by experience level, gender, undergraduate degree, or initial knowledge of life science. The proposed project seeks to measure longitudinal shifts in middle school life science teachers'subject matter knowledge (SMK) and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) due to these professional development programs. We will use valid and reliable assessment tools written to encompass the Content Standards for Science Education of the National Research Council. Test items reflect the extensive research literature on life science misconceptions, the common views that students often develop themselves and that must be changed to achieve scientific understanding. Our assessments will be administered through a secure on-line assessment system prior to and after the professional development experience. By aggregating data we will be able to characterize the areas of strength and weakness of program participants, identifying the most appropriate topics for future institutes. With the measurement of participant knowledge gains, the construction of hierarchical linear models will aid in revealing differences in approach to professional development (duration, group size, involvement of research scientists, placement in research laboratories, practice with classroom activities, teacher curriculum development, etc.) to see which are associated with significant gains. Interactions with teacher attributes (college degree, college major, years teaching, pre-test scores, gender) will allow us to identify forms of training that may be particularly effective for certain sub-groups of teachers. Overall, this project will build upon the myriad of existing approaches used for teacher professional development so that future programs will be far more effective in helping teachers acquire the knowledge needed to impact student learning. Data will be shared with institute evaluation staff and made available to other educational researchers. This study will contribute to a knowledge base that will help to refine and create new professional development programs for teachers. Policy makers and federal agencies will have additional tools with which to inform the design and expansion of professional development programs for the nation's teachers. Public Health Relevance: Assessment of Life Science Intermediate School Educators (ALSISE) This application addresses broad Challenge Area (12) Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Education and specific Challenge Topic: 12-OD-102 Teacher Preparation Programs. The relevance of the proposed work to public health is to determine how best to prepare teachers to convey middle school life science topics, including human physiology and health, to their students. If successful, middle school students will better understand issues of public health.